Heartland

Anyone know of an easy way to hook up an Mini Disc Player to a desktop PC ?

I sold part of my Vinyl bootleg collection some time ago and recorded most of them to Mini Disc (didn't have any CD/DVD burners back then); the idea is to get the audio to PC to make CD-R's (and to make available for weeding )

Anyone ?

Some newer PCs (such as those in our office) have optical inputs to the soundcard.

However, if you're not too bothered about a slight loss of quality you should be able to hook your MD player up to the microphone socket on your PC.

you could connect the MD's line out to the line in on your PC's soundcard, and then use something like GoldWave or Soundforge do the capture and divide it up into tracks etc.

By far the easiest method is to connect the MD to a standalone audio CD recorder using a digital (or optical) lead - the CD recorder will recognise the trackmarks on the MD and increment them automatically with no gaps. This is the method I use with tapes - i.e. tape to MD, put in trackmarks, then MD to CD recorder. easy!

Scardwel wrote:By far the easiest method is to connect the MD to a standalone audio CD recorder using a digital (or optical) lead - the CD recorder will recognise the trackmarks on the MD and increment them automatically with no gaps. This is the method I use with tapes - i.e. tape to MD, put in trackmarks, then MD to CD recorder. easy!

There's a bit of PC software that will do similar - hook the MD up to the soundcard and it will import the MD tracks as seperate tracks (mp3 or wav), copy over tracknames or name them sequentially if they're unnamed. Unfortunately the guy who writes it's site is currently offline but I can upload the software somewhere if anyone needs it.

Edit: meant to say you need a NetMD for this to work...

You can get the MD connected to an USB port but you needs a raft of software for this (Sonicstage) and you would still probably have to record it through the soundcard. I'd suggest you do it as Scardy indicates and then cue it up in your Audio Editing program to take out clicks and ticks. More info on the Sony site here:http://www.sonystyle.co.uk

I have a Sharp MT108H which unfortunately only has an optical 'Line In' (no 'Line Out' ) the only other option is via the headphone [have a 'phono' lead which ends in 2 RCA jacks (red&white)] but will need an external soundblaster card like this one:

http://be-en.europe.creative.com/shop/p ... p?prod=448


About the Sony NetMD: which models are recommendable? is it possible to transfer from MD to PC (the "promo talk" at sony.com only speaks of PC to MD) ?

Thanks for the help!

Just connect line out from the MD to line-in on the pc.

When I record live from the radio to pc or from tape to pc I route the sound through the MD as it gives a nice clean output whereas connecting anything else to line-in gives a slight hum.

Dan wrote:Just connect line out from the MD to line-in on the pc.

When I record live from the radio to pc or from tape to pc I route the sound through the MD as it gives a nice clean output whereas connecting anything else to line-in gives a slight hum.

Well I did mention that the MD only has a Line In, so that won't do it

but you can use the headphone socket - it's not ideal but it'll do. Just connect that to your PC using a lead that has a standard 3.5mm plug on each end (you can buy this from most hi-fi shops.)

Scardwel wrote:but you can use the headphone socket - it's not ideal but it'll do. Just connect that to your PC using a lead that has a standard 3.5mm plug on each end (you can buy this from most hi-fi shops.)

Thanks! Do you know of any on-line shops ?

this'll do the job - and it's a snip at 3 quid + postage:

http://www.cybermarket.co.uk/ishop/923/shopscr394.html

Hojyuu-obi wrote:Well I did mention that the MD only has a Line In, so that won't do it

You connect your minidisc to the rest of your hifi with 4 phono sockets, right? 2 are line in, the other 2 are line out. If it had no line out you'd not be able to hear anything you played on it, or is it a headphones only portable type thing.

Ugh, don't use the headphone socket. Results are awful.

Hojyuu-obi wrote:About the Sony NetMD: which models are recommendable? is it possible to transfer from MD to PC (the "promo talk" at sony.com only speaks of PC to MD)

You can...but only if the MD itself was recorded through the PC. I have a Sony laptop with an internal MD docking station. This makes it a bit easier as I run the MD straight through my Yahama soundcard. But this is a fairly unusual setup. If you're having serious problems then give me a shout and I see if I can help you out with this.